sleepy lid and that he straightened his stooping figure with a strange effort.
"Excuse me a moment," he said, feeling in his pockets. "I think I've got
some of my chemicals; and after that we'll go up to the house." And he
stooped again over the target, putting something with his finger over each of
the shot-holes, so far as March could see merely a dull-gray smear. Then they
went through the gathering twilight up the long green avenues to the great
house.
Here again, however, the eccentric investigator did not enter by the front
door. He walked round the house until he found a window open, and, leaping
into it, introduced his friend to what appeared to be the gun-room. Rows of the
regular instruments for bringing down birds stood against the walls; but across
a table in the window lay one or two weapons of a heavier and more
formidable pattern.
"Hullo! these are Burke's big-game rifles," said Fisher. "I never knew he
kept them here." He lifted one of them, examined it briefly, and put it down
again, frowning heavily. Almost as he did so a strange young man came
hurriedly into the room. He was dark and sturdy, with a bumpy forehead and a
bulldog jaw, and he spoke with a curt apology.
"I left Major Burke's guns here," he said, "and he wants them packed up.
He's going away to-night."
And he carried off the two rifles without casting a glance at the stranger;
through the open window they could see his short, dark figure walking away
across the glimmering garden. Fisher got out of the window again and stood
looking after him.
"That's Halkett, whom I told you about," he said. "I knew he was a sort of
secretary and had to do with Burke's papers; but I never knew he had anything
to do with his guns. But he's just the sort of silent, sensible little devil who
might be very good at anything; the sort of man you know for years before
you find he's a chess champion."
He had begun to walk in the direction of the disappearing secretary, and
they soon came within sight of the rest of the house-party talking and laughing
on the lawn. They could see the tall figure and loose mane of the lion-hunter
dominating the little group.
"By the way," observed Fisher, "when we were talking about Burke and
Halkett, I said that a man couldn't very well write with a gun. Well, I'm not so
sure now. Did you ever hear of an artist so clever that he could draw with a
gun? There's a wonderful chap loose about here."
Sir Howard hailed Fisher and his friend the journalist with almost